


How can I love the heartbreak, you're the one I love

by sawasawako



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, F/M, percabeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22403386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawasawako/pseuds/sawasawako
Summary: Annabeth struggles to cope with Percy's absence/possible death in BoTL.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 101





	How can I love the heartbreak, you're the one I love

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve always wondered what Annabeth was going through during the 2 weeks Percy went missing in BoTL, so this is that. it’s nothing much, really just an excuse to work my rusty writing gears lol. hope you enjoy nonetheless :)

The two weeks Percy went missing were the worst two weeks of Annabeth’s life, and that was saying something because her life had pretty much been a trainwreck since she was born.

In a depressing way, this turn of events was just another crack in the jagged terrain of her life, another tragic page in this godforsaken narrative. When misfortune seems so ubiquitous in your life, it feels almost inevitable.

Some repressed, fatalistic part of Annabeth had expected this, and that element of predictability—the fact that the occurrence itself made it feel inevitable to begin with—was like working salt into the wound. 

The worst had come to bear, in the end. Percy was gone.

Annabeth‘s chest felt like it was constricting in on itself, her heart threatening to collapse into a void. She played back the kiss she gave him over and over in her head until it felt like a hallucination. The thought that it could have been their first and last only made her feel worse.

The first few nights, she couldn’t sleep. During the day, she was inconsolable.

She tried to distract herself by training, but the gaping hole in her chest just kept widening every minute she spent hacking at a dummy rather than trying to find Percy.

She was stuck in an emotional catch-22––if she forced herself not to think about him, the worry would find other ways into her system until it rendered distraction useless. If she did think about him, it would swallow her whole anyway.

At one point, it got so overbearing that she yelled out in frustration and flung her dagger towards the ground in a fit of emotion. It made a dent and lodged itself into the crevice, the hilt slanting up dramatically towards the sky. Chest heaving, Annabeth swiped roughly at the blood on her chin and stormed out of the arena.

The other campers knew to keep their distance. Some looked at Annabeth sympathetically, and it made her want to fling her dagger in their direction, too. Some whispered among themselves, and others did their best to mind their own business. They all registered vaguely in Annabeth’s periphery, and she endeavoured to ignore them all.

Meanwhile, her body was in the process of being engulfed by anger, guilt, grief, resentment and hope that barely dared breathe, all roiled into one. She was determined to push through each day with the morbid survival mentality of an astronaut stranded on Mars.

On Day 7, Annabeth went to the shore, where the ocean met the borders of camp.

She sat at the foot of a sand dune and looked out to the horizon, where the sun was setting and painted the sky in shades of orange. Blue-grey waves lapped gently and incessantly at the sand, a welcome rhythm that soothed Annabeth and cleared her mind.

It reminded her of Percy.

She sat back and enjoyed the ambient noise for a good five minutes, and then something stirred in her gut.

As if steered by instinct, Annabeth got up and walked to the water’s edge.

Without hesitating, she stepped into the waves, and immediately felt the cool of the water refresh her, as if she’d just taken a good nap (which, admittedly, she hadn’t gotten for quite some time).

Strange… This effect should only be experienced by children of Poseidon. Why was it happening to her?

Lulled, Annabeth walked deeper into the water. The waves tickled her skin, and she swore she could hear laughter––not the eerie kind, but the kind you found in fairy tales and forests illuminated with sunlight. The emotional white noise in her head seemed to dissipate just a little, and the ache in her chest dulled to a low hum.

Suddenly, inexplicably, she felt like everything was alright again.

By now, she was thigh-deep in the water and her shorts were about to be soaked. Her hands were fully submerged, and rivulets of water flowed through the gaps in her fingers like warm, invisible hands grasping for hers.

Annabeth felt like she was in a trance––usually not a good thing, but this one felt therapeutic, and she had a clear head.

Somehow, the water was healing her. Her emotional wounds started to close, just a bit, the way physical gashes would. The bruises on her heart began to dissolve, like bruises on the limbs from battle.

A part of her knew this was temporary. The moment she stepped out of the water, it would all be undone.

But for now, she wanted to be healed.

Fleetingly, she understood Percy’s connection to the sea––its rhythmic ceaselessness was powerful yet calming, its vastness intimidating and profound. Water had an intrinsic connection to life, and you could feel it in its healing capacities. Annabeth’s cheeks were wet with tears.

How cruel that she could feel Percy all around her, yet he wasn’t really there. How cruel that every time she thought of the sea, she would think of him.

•

Annabeth stood in the waves until the sun disappeared behind the horizon and the sky darkened to a shade of bruised purple.

In the darkness, she still felt safe in the water, like when Percy created an air bubble around the two of them at the bottom of Siren Bay and she was weeping. But the night made things more ambiguous, unpredictable. She could feel the tide coming in stronger, more insistently, and she worked to stand her ground.

“Percy,” she said, almost a whisper, as the waves built. “Where are you?”

There was no answer.


End file.
